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11 MARCH 2019, AUSTIN TX - Tableau Foundation and Community Solutions, a national leader in the fight to end homelessness, announced today an investment of $1.3 million in software, services, and financial support to help eliminate veteran and chronic homelessness in 50 communities across the U.S. by 2025.

Community Solutions will be participating in a panel and numerous events at SXSW. President and Chief Executive Officer Rosanne Haggerty will discuss the work of Built for Zero, the nationwide movement of more than 70 communities working to end homelessness — 10 of which have already ended chronic and/or veteran homelessness.

Yesterday Built for Zero’s partners at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) announced that they had exceeded their goals to house 20,000 of the country’s most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness.

Now they’ve set an ambitious new goal to end chronic homelessness in Canada, as the first step to ending homelessness outright. Their new effort is called Built for Zero Canada, and it will mirror our U.S.

After serving in the U.S. Marines Corps, Meier experienced a layoff and then an eviction. With no other housing options, he slept in his car for three months.

Meier was able to escape homelessness, through the support of the VA and a dedicated case manager. He’s grateful for the assistance and support he received, which helped him regain housing and then employment.

In the Built for Zero Collaborative, we've identified a handful of communities that we believe are in the 'Last Mile' of ending homelessness for a target population. Bakersfield, California, is one of our Last Mile communities, which has quickly and successfully implemented a multi-pronged strategy aimed at ending chronic homelessness within the next four months.

Homelessness is a constantly shifting problem. In order to effectively solve for it, communities need accurate and up-to-date data on the issue.

That's why Built for Zero communities create real-time, person-specific data sets of the people experiencing homelessness in their region. This information is graphed in custom dashboards, powered by Tableau, a data visualization software. These dashboards make it easier for local teams to analyze their data and use it to inform their decision-making.

In 2008, Rana Awdish was a healthy physician about to complete her fellowship in critical care, and she was pregnant with her first child. Then, everything changed: an undetected tumor in her liver burst, causing her organs to fail, and suddenly she was fighting for her life in the very hospital where she worked.

This experience as a patient had a profound impact on Awdish, as she realized the unintentional harm that can be caused by interactions with healthcare providers.